Didn’t some stand-up comic figure out it’s a dance built around not spilling your beer?
Same reason their older siblings did: Weed.
(You say “boring meandering waffle” like it’s a bad thing.)
With few exceptions*, pretty much any “serious” music composed after 1914.
*such as Gershwin, Copland, Philip Glass.
About 1/6 of the way through there really is a part that drags quite a lot, where nothing much happens for quite a few pages, except for descriptions of landscape, as they make their way towards Rivendell. After that, the plot picks up quite a bit and the book becomes more “adult” and the plot more complex. The first 1/6, i.e., Book One of Fellowship is really essentially a children’s book similar to, though a bit darker than, The Hobbit. It changes after that.
Martin Scorsese. His movies are just plain unpleasant. I don’t need unpleasantness.
Lenny Bruce.
I’ve heard bits of his stand-up, and he’s just not funny. I doubt he was funny in 1960-something, either.
You know how Richard Pryor said “Nigger” and “Fuck” a lot, but still built a funny comedy routine out of it? Yeah, Lenny Bruce did none of that. He just said “Nigger” and “Fuck” (and “Dyke” and “Spic” and whatever the hell else) a lot and the audiences laughed because they’d never heard it from a comedian before.
Kanye West.
I’m a huge hip hop fan, have been almost my whole life. I loved Kanye’s first album (College Dropout), thought his second album was even better (Late Registration) and liked the third (Graduation). And I also loved the production work he did for other artists.
But everything after that, when all the critics began proclaiming him a genius, sounds awful to me. 808 & Heartbreaks, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, Watch the Throne, Yeezus, I think they’re all garbage. He was much better before he became a “genius.”
The book “Watership Down”. Sorry, folks, it’s a book about rabbits.
After giving up on the book about 50 or so confusing pages in, I decided to watch the movie, and loved it. IDK if this was the real theme of the book, but the movie was definitely an analogy of the Soviet takeover of East Germany.
Cobain and Nirvana and the whole Goth/Emo phenomenon.
Yeah, I get that you’re expressing your inner emotions, but that’s somehow selling to thousands of fans?
“I’m so depressed I want to garrotte myself with a guitar string” is a popular message?
And what are you so depressed about, anyway? You grew up in a Seattle suburb with clean water, clothing, food, and housing, not out in Ruhashya or Jijiga.
How did the die-hard fans survive a full album and not just dive off skyscrapers after saying “Yeah, I think so too!”
BTW: Punk and White guys doing Rap/Hip-Hop
I get the disenfranchised youth thing. I just didn’t happen to be unemployed and musically obnoxious when Punk crossed the pond.
Nor am I black, though I do understand a lot of the minority issues that originally formed the lyrical foundation of the genre.
But I think if you’re gonna sing, then sing (You, too, Lou Reed – oh! Never mind, then.) and if you’re gonna make music then make your own rather than stringing along other artists’ soundbites and rhythms.
But now-a-days, Rap/Hip-Hop has a) turned its rage against its founding population, and b) sold out with rich white guys imitating the style while really lacking the key understanding of what it’s like to be oppressed.
Michael Jackson.
Okay, he was a talented musician and dancer; he and his family came back from a long jail term.
But “The KING…” of anything? I think not. He was dragging out the death of disco, which was popular and died during his prison time.
Nicolas Cage.
Not even a likeable face. Not one interesting project. Not one example of decent acting. Not worth writing more.
Rand (Ayn- or -Paul) & Libertarianism
Hitchens said it best: I don’t advocate selfishness as a political philosophy, either. It’s despicable and unsustainable.
Murdoch & Fox
You claim that you’re just providing a counter-argument to the left’s message that’s prevalent in the media, but the left doesn’t convey so much hate about so much, so often.
BTW, since they carried the Superbowl as an entertainment offering: Football & other spectator sports.
Yeah, I understand games are fun and sports are healthy and it’s really cool to see the best players do their thing and they need to make a living too.
But should they be making multi-millions of dollars to play a game? Should so many billions of dollars be spent on less than an hour (per game) of advertising time to advertise alcohol and other unhealthy foods as well as a sedentary stuff-your-face-until-you-explode lifestyle? My coworker said, “Maybe we should scrap the multi-billion dollar speed rail project and divert that money to making sure we survive the drought!” No, maybe we should divert two weeks worth of advertising dollars toward solving the drought and we’d be able to afford six permanent solutions! It’s pretty entertaining to be able to live and work out here in this converted Western Mojave desert! and if you really like the game, then put down the pizza, put down the tortilla chip and wipe the guacamole off your hand, take off the dual-beer-can drinking visor, and go out and play. Maybe you’ll work off some of that beer gut!
The Bible (as a literary composition).
Since I’ve got this neat little digital collection of all the scriptures of all the world’s major religions, it’s interesting to compare the styles and qualities. As a tale, the Mahabharata is beautiful. As poetry, the Tao te Ching is astoundingly concise. As a series of historical and inspirational tales, the Torah plagiarizes from all the other cultures in the region (i.e. Mesopotamia and the Middle East) and the New Testament self-contradicts while carefully ignoring the first half of the main character’s life. It would be like reading “Return of the King” without ever having seen or read The Fellowship of the Ring or The Two Towers. Yeah, this guy’s trying to fulfill a quest/prophecy; is he some kind of self-appointed megalomaniac, or did the masses just convince him to give it a shot? The life & times of Siddartha Gautama Shakyamuni seem to make more sense – largely because nothing is left out.
Picasso, Dali, Poumeyrol: I can handle Giger; I just don’t get these three.
Warhol’s art-of-the-mundane is mundane, not art.
Led Zeppelin.
Nice name–with a cute story of its origin. A great set of phenomenal technicians – but that’s not enough if you’ve got nothing to say. And for some reason Plant’s screechy voice annoys me like Geddy Lee’s voice annoys Joey P.
Lost, Seinfeld, and Friends (especially Aniston).
Why so special? Were we really just lacking decent plots and stories so much that we settled for shows that really don’t go anywhere?
“Reality” TV
How did over glorified game-shows that were created to fill in during the late 1980’s Hollywood Writers’ Strike turn into a thriving industry? It’s not like they’re even original ideas. The Bachelor/Bachelorette = The Dating Game; Fear Factor = Beat The Clock; The Housewives of the nearest major city is nothing more than voyeurism and out-of-context video-bites to create faux conflict.
—G!
The things you think are precious
I can’t understand!
…–Donald Fagen & Walter Becker (Steely Dan)
…Reelin’ in the Years
…Can’t Buy a Thrill
Frank Lloyd Wright- I find his buildings cold, uncomfortable and ugly. He would have fit in building in Stalinist Russia. I like the stained glass designs, but that is all.
Eh? Michael Jackson never went to jail or prison, nor did anyone in his family. He was accused of crimes, but never convicted of anything.
“The Handmaid’s Tale” is a terrible book.
There. I said it. And I’m a woman.
:rolleyes:
I agree with every word of this. I avoid most music between about 1750 and 1815; it just sounds, like you said, dainty. (Not that dainty is always bad. Some Bach could pull off that daintiness but be fantastic, like his B minor orchestral suite; but Mozart, Haydn, and early Beethoven? Boring.)
I’m surprised nobody has mentioned Frank Gehry. I’ve been in a couple of his buildings, and I get that feeling when you just get off a roller coaster, and your brain is still moving, but your body isn’t. I find myself desperate for a right angle. And seen from the outside (there’s one near where I live), I’d call it “post-terrorism.”
All of poetry. (Music lyrics don’t count.) Of the 3, I feel I’m missing the most with poetry.
I studied it in college a little, even wrote a few papers. I still think I’m missing something: to put it naively, why doesn’t the poet express his ideas in an essay? I’m not saying he should: I’m saying I don’t get poetry. 
I had a similar dismissive view of Pink Floyd until I dug a little deeper.
Certainly they don’t rush a tune but such as “Money”, “Free Four” or “Fearless” are pretty tight and to the point.
Also, I thought of them as being multi-minute meandering guitar solos but, I humbly submit that the main solos in “Comfortably Numb” “Stay” and “Mother” are 30 seconds each at most and are as good as they get.
My own artistic example would be “Friends” and “Seinfeld”. I gave them both a try but they failed to raise even a smile. Everything felt like a set-up and the jokes were signposted to within a inch of their lives. Certainly they were slick, but they also felt totally lacking in heart. I didn’t for a second believe they were real people.
Good to see that I’m not alone in not liking Mozart. When I say that I listen mainly to classical music, people almost always tell me: “Oh yes. Mozart’s music is so beautiful.”
Well, as a matter of fact…
“But how can you say that you like classical music if you don’t like Mozart?” Mind blown :D.
There are a few things that I find pleasant: his late symphonies, some of his chamber music, some of his concertos but that’s it: pleasant, not beautiful. The Commendatore scene from Don Giovanni and the beginning of the Requiem are the only things that I consider great and that’s perhaps 15 minutes of music… I think I like Haydn a little bit better (not a big fan either, though) and early Beethoven definitely more.
Excellent point. I didn’t mention Warhol because he’s not an artist in my book, just an awful colourist.
Noting that I don’t listen to much of vocal classical music, I don’t see how Handel tends to be included in so many top 10 lists. He’s got very few ‘masterpieces’. I think that since he composed so many works in English and in England, he’s achieved an undue prominence.
Minecraft.
That South Park episode nailed it.
Ayn Rand described Mozart as “pre-music.”